Falling into You

by Abrams, Lauren

  “He’s a fucking asshole,” I manage to gasp out.

  “He is a total fucking asshole,” Ben agrees.

  I gaze down at his hands, which are still clenched into fists. I realize that there’s blood dripping from one of them. I cradle it in my palm gently.

  “Ben!”

  “He deserved it.”

  I bite my lip and tear off my cardigan, wrapping it around his knuckles. It’s entirely out of character for him to punch someone. Great, now I’ve dragged him even further into my mess.

  “Now we’re ruining clothing over the fucking asshole,” he says, disgusted, trying to pull the wrapping off his fingers.

  “It’s not my sweater. It’s hers.” It makes me smile.

  In spite of all of it, this whole messed-up situation and everything falling to pieces around me, we both find this incredibly funny and burst out laughing.

  “Good riddance,” he says, wiping his hand with the sweater and smearing blood all across it. He does it again and shoves it into a trash can with a flourish.

  “Good riddance,” I manage. I’m not talking about the sweater anymore, but Chris and Sophia. I know that I don’t mean that entirely. And there they come again, the big tears bubbling in my throat.

  “Come on.” He throws his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  We’ve both forgotten Chris’s warning, and flashbulbs pop into my eyes, and I reach up to shield them, but it’s a million lights hitting all at once. Ben pulls me closer to him as we break through the crowd.

  “Do you know Chris Jensen?” a voice from behind one of the lights screams. I turn back a little bit, surprised.

  Do I know Chris Jensen? The question lingers. I thought I did. But I was apparently wrong. It makes me want to go back in and punch him myself. The muscles in my body tense.

  “He’s not worth it,” Ben hisses, under his breath. He raises his hand to hail a cab, and ushers me inside. I follow, wordless.

  ***

  “What do you want to do next?” Ben asks me an hour later.

  We’re curled up on the couch in a hotel room and his strong arms are around me. After getting in the cab, we headed to Sophia’s apartment. “We need to just get it over with while she’s not there,” he said. While I waited in the backseat, he used my keys to let himself in to pack my things. My suitcase is sitting in the corner of the room and I’m just grateful that I don’t have to see Sophia.

  What had he asked? Something about what I was going to do next. “I honestly don’t know,” I say. I reach for my phone. It’s a reflex because it’s not there anymore.

  The first thing Ben did after we got to the hotel was to turn my phone off. I had silenced it back in the cab, but there were 48 missed calls by the time we got checked in and to the room. Giving it a look of disgust, Ben chucked it into his bag. “It’s better if we just turn it off. Make sure the asshole can’t get a hold of you,” he told me.

  “It’s Christmas in two days,” he adds. “Home?”

  The thought of dealing with my over-bearing, all-knowing, and perfectly beautiful mother makes me shudder. She couldn’t see me like this. She would have a fit. I loved her, but the last thing I want or need to do right now is to be trapped in that house, that town.

  I don’t say anything and Ben nods. “Maybe Christmas with Claire isn’t the best idea,” he adds.

  I shake my head and shudder a little bit. “I think maybe I just need some time to sort things out, and my mother isn’t exactly known for providing a lot of space.” Ben nods in quick agreement. “Maybe I’ll just go back to school. The dorms open up right after Christmas. So, I could just head back there and tell my mom I want to get a head start on the semester.”

  Ben considers this and nods. “Road trip?” he suggests.

  In spite of all of it, of Chris and Sophia and the fact that the memory of it (give it its real name—rape, I tell myself) had just reentered my brain, I smile at his words. A road trip sounded pretty good right now.

  “I get free rein in terms of musical choice?”

  He groans slightly. “If that junk that you listen to can be called music, then I guess so, yes.”

  ***

  Two days later, on Christmas, Ben and I are halfway to Atlanta. We rented a car in New York and I insisted on buying Ben a plane ticket from Atlanta to Ohio. Both of these things required my dipping into my savings account, and for a second, I wished that I had the foresight to grab some of the cash in the envelope that Cleo and William had left for Sophia and me. This was her fault, after all.

  But my next thought was that I would rather die than owe her anything else.

  Ben and I had called our parents the day before to break the news that neither of us would be making it to Ohio for Christmas. My mother started crying immediately when I told her, and the sound of her voice broke my heart, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go home to that house.

  Christmas had never been my favorite time of year, not since my dad died, and with the memories of Chris and Sophia and everything else fluttering around in my head, I knew that I was headed for a serious breakdown if I had to spend even one minute trying to pretend to my mother that everything was all right. I managed to calm her down by promising a January trip.

  “I love you, favorite daughter,” she said.

  “Only daughter,” I corrected her. It was an old ritual.

  “Love you too, Mom.”

  I know Chris has been calling me. Earlier that morning, Ben spent almost half an hour deleting all of the messages.

  “You’re going to need to change your number,” he said, disgusted.

  “It would have ended badly, anyways,” I say to Ben.

  It comes out of nowhere. I’ve been trying to avoid the subject, to pretend like my every thought wasn’t consumed by the image of him and her in that stupid bedroom. I can tell that Ben knows that it hasn’t been working, but he’s managed not to say anything about it, either.

  He doesn’t say anything back.

  “I mean, what was I thinking? He’s going to be James Ross, for chrissakes. I’m nobody.”

  “Don’t say that.” It’s a command.

  “I mean, really, though. It’s not like there was any kind of future there. It doesn’t even matter anyways. I think he and Sophia will be perfectly happy together. They can bask in each other’s perfect beautiful glow and I can go be plain old Hallie, the one that no one wants.” My voice is breaking up and I hate that I don’t believe a word that I just said and that I still can’t get the image of the two of them together out of my head.

  “You know that’s not true,” he says. I’m still driving, but I risk a look at him, and I’m about to start crying again (it’s already happened twice) and I know I’m going to need to pull over. “I mean, there wasn’t a future there, because he’s a fucking cheater and you’re too good for him. But it’s not true that no one wants you.”

  I don’t say anything back. I’m still fighting the tears.

  “Hey,” he says softly, reaching for my hand. “It’s Christmas. We need dinner.”

  I can’t manage a response. I pull off when I see a sign for a 24-hour diner, and when we get out of the car, he pulls me into his arms for a long hug.

  “He’ll make a terrible James Ross. Those movies totally suck.”

  I know for a fact that Ben loves those movies, but I appreciate the effort that he makes on my behalf, and so I force the sadness back inside and grin at him.

  “I read the script and it’s really the worst thing ever written. You would have died.”

  “Tell me,” he says as we slip into a booth.

  I’m running through all the lines I can remember, putting on the terrible accents and laughing at myself and Ben’s laughing, too, and I can almost forget everything else. Almost.

  “Was Susan mad that you came to New York?” I ask as we’re finishing up dinner. He hasn’t called her once since he’s been with me. All of my old thoughts about our friendsh
ip slipping away cross my mind. But it’s Ben who’s been holding my hand and mopping up my tears. And I haven’t asked him anything about his own life, not once. Everything had been about me, was about me and I’m angry with myself when I realize it.

  He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. “We broke up.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He doesn’t respond. I know that he probably did try to tell me. I feel like crap. Here he is, nursing me though a not-even-breakup, driving cross-country on Christmas, and I wasn’t even there for him when he needed me. Another thought strikes me and I’m selfish again. If I had known about Susan, I wouldn’t have had a reason to go with Sophia to New York. Never would have met Chris fucking Jensen. Never would have had my heart ripped into a million pieces.

  “I’m sorry, Ben.” I place my hand over his.

  “Don’t be,” he says. “It was time. It got to the point where I couldn’t even remember why we were together anymore. We weren’t right, you know? It wasn’t right.” He shakes his head to accompany his words.

  “Did you love her?”

  He takes a deep breath and looks up at me. He’s hiding something, but I can’t tell what. My powers of perception have been seriously diminished by all of the crying that I’ve been doing lately.

  “I didn’t,” he says finally. I’m pretty sure it’s the truth. He doesn’t look sad or desperate or any of the things that people who’ve been broken are supposed to look like. For example, he doesn’t look like me right now.

  “Well, good riddance, then. I never liked her anyway.” It wasn’t precisely true, but it was an old refrain for us. He was never too broken up about any of the girlfriends, and that was enough of a response for him, usually. I know that Susan had been different, so I offer something else. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.”

  “Don’t be. It was amicable. It just wasn’t working anymore and I couldn’t see how dragging us through more months or years of not quite right was going to help.”

  I nod, and he smiles.

  I finish my piece of pie and put some money down. He starts to say something and then stops himself.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Do you love him?” Not did. Do. Present tense. The words are measured and slow and they take my breath away. I don’t want to look at him, because he’ll know in one second what my answer is, so I concentrate on the crumbs of pie crust instead.

  Words spill out of me. “I mean, I barely knew him, it was just a fling, and obviously, he felt nothing for me, he fucking slept with my best friend, that’s all. It was like this perfect storm of things and…” I would’ve kept rambling, but Ben silences me.

  “That really isn’t answering my question, Hallie.”

  I don’t say anything. I just look up at him and there’s no way that I can keep the emotion out of my face, and he nods silently.

  When we get back in the car, Ben takes the keys and I sit and stare out the window for long hours. There aren’t any more words that can help me right now.

  Chapter 28

  CHRIS

  I’m bleeding from the mouth, my brain says.

  I grab a towel from Sam’s kitchen and try to wipe some of the blood away.

  I’m really not sure what to do. Follow them? Go home? Figure out a way to apologize?

  I dial her number again and again on my phone, but there’s no response. The guy, and I know his name but I don’t want to say it or even think it, probably threw it in the Hudson River already. I keep dialing anyways.

  Sophia comes barreling out of the kitchen and stops dead in her tracks when she sees me. The last thing I want to do is talk to her. What had she said? “They’re together now. They have history.” I was no longer sure if her words were true, not after seeing Hallie’s face. I glare at her.

  “Chris,” she says, shaking my arm. The taste of her in my mouth is sour. I had been trying to stop it when Hallie saw us, naked and pooled together on the bed.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I said. “I just don’t want you.”

  She had continued her assault on my body like I hadn’t said a word. Just as I was extracting myself from her vise-like grip, Hallie walked in the door.

  “Chris,” she says, more urgently. “I need to talk to you.”

  “No. You don’t. In fact, you never need to speak with me again.”

  “No, I really do.”

  I’m falling apart, I think. And before I even realize what’s happening, Sophia’s grabbing my arm and we’re in the elevator to the roof. We’re standing and the sky is all lit up and it would be beautiful, but the only thing I can think is to ask myself what Hallie might have said when she saw this.

  She seems to be waiting for me to say something, so I say the only thing in my head.

  “I love her. And I never even got the chance to tell her.”

  She nods, as if this was the expected response. “Yeah. I think I figured that one out.”

  She puts her head in her hands and looks back up at me. The seductress Sophia that I had been with just minutes before in that stupid bedroom is gone, and she’s years younger and her face is sad. For a fleeting moment, I remember that the girl standing in front of me had been stuck in my head for years and that I had been waiting for what just happened in that bedroom since practically forever. All I feel now is sickness at the sight of her face.

  “What?” I ask. “You said you needed to talk to me, and here I am. With you, the reason that the girl that I am completely in love with will never speak to me again.”

  “I didn’t realize…” she starts. “I thought…”

  “Spit it out, Sophia.”

  “If I had known…”

  I turn to leave but she catches my arm and drags me back. “This is fucking important, asshole. I didn’t know that you were in love with her, ok? I like Hallie, she’s the only real friend that I ever had, and…”

  I cut her off by laughing bitterly. “Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? If you go ahead and fuck all of your friend’s boyfriends, I think I can see why you don’t have too many of those.”

  “Shut up, Chris. And you’re not even her boyfriend.”

  “That’s beside the point.” We were together, I thought in my head. We hadn’t had the talk yet, but I had been willing to do anything—follow her to Atlanta, give up the James Ross movies, fly back and forth—whatever she needed to make it work. That’s what people did when they were in love with each other. Before I saw her with him.

  Sophia’s saying something and I think I hear her but the words don’t make sense.

  “Sophia, what did you say?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that she’s not with Ben.”

  I shake her and it isn’t gentle. “You told me that she was with him. You told me that she was in love with him, damn it.”

  Her eyes are focused on the ground, so I grab her face and force her to look into my eyes.

  “You said that they were together.”

  “I lied.”

  “You little fucking manipulative bitch.” It comes out in a growl, and god help me, I’ve never hit a woman but Sophia Pearce is about to be the first. “Tell me what happened. Now.”

  “I thought was just a little fling with you and her, okay? But then she kept going on and on about how you were Mr. Perfect. I got angry. I wanted; I don’t even know what I wanted…”

  “Sophia,” I warn.

  “I thought you were going to use her and throw her away so I thought it would be better for her to see who you really were first.” She doesn’t even believe her own words. I can see it in her face, but I focus on her other statement.

  “You don’t even know who I really am! You don’t know me at all!” I’m shouting now, but the roof is deserted and there’s no one to hear us. Sophia covers her ears like I’m hurting her.

  “I do know you, Jensen. I remember all of those parties in high school and those girls and the little games we used to play. We’re two of a kind.”r />
  She wasn’t entirely wrong. “People change, Sophia. I changed.”

  She tries to defend herself again, but her face doesn’t match her words. “She’s my friend and I didn’t want you to dick her over, you know…”

  “We both know that’s bullshit. You don’t give a shit about her. You were thinking about yourself. You are always thinking about yourself. About movie premieres. About Hollywood. Don’t make it out like you were trying to protect her, because we both know that’s the biggest load of…”

  “Fine.” She cuts back in. “Ok. I was pissed. I was jealous. I didn’t know what you saw in her. She wears argyle sweaters. She’s from Ohio. She’s supposed to be my wingwoman. You were supposed to be her tour guide. I know that you’ve wanted this…” She gestures between us. “For years. Years, Chris. And then I saw you with her and I was jealous. I’m human.”

  “That’s debatable.” I see in her eyes that the words have hurt her, but I don’t care. I want to punch her in the face. “Finish your story, Sophia.”

  “When she came home from being with you last night, I could tell that something had happened between the two of you. She said that it was nothing, but then she asked if Ben could stay with us for a couple of days, and I assumed that your little fling was ending. I thought everyone could win. Ben would finally realize that Hallie is the girl of his dreams and they would be together forever and make perfect little babies in a perfect little small town, and I would step in to her shoes. I thought I saw a chance to...”

  “You saw a chance to fuck me. In more ways than one.”

  She shrugs helplessly.

  “And so you started lying.” I wasn’t asking a question.

  “I wasn’t lying about her being in love with him, you know. She does. Or did.” She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “I don’t know. They’re not together. Not yet.”

  “She told you that?”

  “She told me that,” Sophia confirms. “But if you ask me, he’s head over heels in love with her.”

  Of course he was in love with her. That had never been a question in my mind, particularly not after I had felt the weight of his punch. And shit, I had just sent her running straight into his arms.